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John Singlaub and the Chinese Connection


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Jack Anderson served alongside Capt. John Birch, Capt. Mitchell L. WerBell III, S/Sgt. Robert Emmett Johnson, USMC, Major John Singlaub, Lt. Roger Hillsman, et al. !! (Gerry Hemming)

It's a pity that Gerry seems to be no longer posting as this information is tantalising to say the least.

I assume Gerry means they were all in China during the Second World War. John Birch was a member of the China Air Task Force when he was killed in 1945. Anderson worked as a foreign correspondent in China. He disliked this work and managed to get involved with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). This is where he made his future CIA contacts including Phil Graham who I suspect helped him get the job with Drew Pearson on the Washington Post in 1947. Mitchell WerBell was also a member of the OSS and saw action in Burma and China. Singlaub was in the OSS in France but moved to China in the final stages of the war. Unfortunately I know very little about Robert Emmett Johnson's war record. Hillsmen was in China but I do not see this as being significant. However, it might have helped shape his views on Vietnam where he was a JFK dove. As a result he was sacked by LBJ after the assassination.

There were other interesting figures in China working with the OSS. This includes William Pawley, Tommy Corcoran, Whitey Willauer, Claire Lee Chennault, Paul Helliwell, E. Howard Hunt, Lucien Conein and Ray Cline.

Why was this important?

(1) This was the first time that these right-wingers joined forces with drug lords to fight communism. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, these OSS members in China were paid for their work with five-pound sacks of opium. When most of these became members of the CIA they continued this relationship with criminals. This was especially true of Cuba in the 1950s and South-East Asia in the 1960s and 1970s. Ted Shackley became the leader of this group and as well as the assassination of JFK they were also the core members of the Iran-Contra scandal.

(2) The other reason China is important is that it was the first time that the intelligence services began to do "private jobs" for right-wing businessmen. Tommy Concoran was the main instigator of this program. Later William Pawley was to play a central role in this. This started in Guatemala in 1954 but then spread to other countries in Latin America. Operation 40 was used to assassinate people who got in their way.

For the full story see the thread on Assassination, Terrorism and the Arms Trade: The Contracting Out of U.S. Foreign Policy: 1940-2006.

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=5799

Another top CIA official involved in anti-Castro operations who was in China during the Second World War was Jake Esterline.

You can find out more about Esterline here:

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKesterline.htm

Here is a photograph of Esterline while serving as an OSS guerrilla warfare expert in China.

post-7-1150797143_thumb.jpg

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